August 21st, 2010

~Saturday~ As briandrdu predicted several months ago when this same thing happened to another limb, "If that's a Bradford Pear, it'll happen again." Sure enough; this is what it looked like yesterday:

I went for a walk around Lake Johnson and when I left, a service was here to clean up the mess. When I got back, I saw that they'd really cleaned up the mess:

While they were at it, they did the same thing to the one on the opposite of the drive. Done with them.

I probably won't be doing too much walking around Lake Johnson again until after September 1, 2010, as they are working on the dam there, and part of the three-mile loop around the lake is closed. I discovered this when going to park and enter at the Lake Dam Road entrance, which I found all closed up and inaccessible to pedestrians. Parking is not ample at this lake, and that entrance was the one with the highest chance of actually getting a parking spot.

With that said, I actually got a spot in the smallest lot right by the boathouse, which was definitely a pleasant surprise. I turned on my iTouch, and I listened to the soundtrack from Miss Saigon while walking. So many beautiful songs in that play: Sun and Moon and Last Night of the World among them.

Facing the boathouse, I headed to the right as that makes you cover the hilliest terrain of the three-mile loop first. I like to get that over with on the first half of my walk.

After crossing the bridge and getting to the path that leads down to the other parking area, there was a sign noting that the dam area of the lake is closed and saying that you should adjust your route accordingly. This translates into, "You are not going to be able to do a loop around the lake. You're going to get so far in this direction and have to turn around."

I forged on, realizing I'd do those nasty hills twice—going and coming back. I passed two big mushrooms that refused to take a picture without reflecting the sun. This one reminded me of a golf ball sitting on a tee:

I got to a place where it's easy to loop back, which I did. Getting past all those hills again, I came up on this man, who just made me start sweating to look at. Okay, it's 90° out, I'm in gym shorts, with a white t-shirt on to reflect the sun, and drenched with sweat. Look at this man. How can that possibly be comfortable?

I couldn't get a clear picture of him, as I was trying to be discrete (yeah, right) taking his picture while I was creeping up behind him.

Just before crossing back over the bridge, a guy jogged past me with tattoos that came out from his shorts and went all the way down both legs to his ankles, and although he had no shirt on at all, there were tattoos that would have come out of his t-shirt sleeves if there were some, and they went all the way down both arms to his wrists.

Crossing over the bridge, I observed a dad down below in the lake in a rowboat with his two small boys. They were going absolutely nowhere with him letting them "help him" row.

As I approached the boathouse, a man was with a woman who was walking excruciatingly slowly with a cane. The thought that this could be a last walk that she wanted to take crossed my mind.

I wasn't going to, but at the last moment, I walked into the boathouse, where I thought I might sit on the rocking chairs for a few minutes to take in the view and the breeze. However, right at the entrance of the main deck area there were rows of folding chairs set up facing the lake and divided by a roll of white paper making a "carpet" going up the aisle between them. A wedding was imminent.

As I started around the other half of the lake, a girl came toward me wobbling on a bike, with a pink helmet on, and taking direction from her father who walked beside her—one of his hands on the bike at times—explaining how the whole balance thing was supposed to work.

I walked on that side of the lake, almost to the dam, where I encountered this sign:

On my way back to the boathouse, at one point along the side of the trail, I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. When I turned back to see what it was, I was treated to a beautiful, neon-blue butterfly. I thought of Vince.

In the parking lot, two ladies dressed to the nines—in this incredible heat—had just gotten out of their car. One of them had on these excruciatingly high-heeled black suede shoes with what looked like a broach-sized cluster of diamonds on the insteps. Wedding guests.

They were waving to some friends in another car waiting for a parking spot, and I said to them, "I'm leaving this spot right here," pointing to my car. They thanked me and waved their friends around.

I stopped at the grocery store on the way home. The person in front of me at the checkout left two of her grocery bags, and the cashier went running out after her with them.

When I got to my car, I reached into my pocket to get my keys, and as I looked up said cashier was running towards me to hand them to me. Bless her heart.

I spent some time this evening preparing for Salon XIII, which is Monday night. In the course of it, I messed around with connecting my BlackBerry to my laptop and learning how to manipulate the phone from the desktop manager. I wanted to download all of my answers to the agenda items so I can just read them off my phone on Monday night. That way I won't have to mess with my laptop, or waste paper printing the agenda and my answers.

Sarah inspired me to do this, as she showed off hers at Kaffee Klatch on Friday.